Books do furnish a room

Earthly Creatures by Stevie Davies The latest novel from Stevie Davies, in my opinion one of the best living writers and one who is certainly not well enough known. This latest novel is set in Germany during the war covering the years 1941 to 1946. The main protagonist is Magdelena Arber who lives in Lubeck. She lives with her father Max, her Aunt Ebba and cousin Clem and is nineteen years old. Her father is a child of the Enlightenment and quotes Diderot and Voltaire. He has spent time in Dachau in 1933 for his views. Magda finds herself torn between which she is taught at school and in the Nazi youth groups and the views of her father: as does her cousin Clem. Magda is called to serve the Fatherland and is sent to East Prussia to be a teacher, whilst Clem has to join the army and is sent to the Eastern Front. In 1941 East Prussia is something of a rural idyll. Magda lives with her senior teacher Ruth and Ruth’s children Julia and Flora (who has a disability). The rural idyll is not all it seems, given the presence of the Gestapo, party officials, and conscientious party members who are not averse to reporting those not following party rules. As time goes on the war encroaches more and more. This is a powerful exploration of living in a climate of fear. How does one manage the internal conflicts? How does one survive in a hostile and paranoid environment. It looks at courage and what it takes to stand up to a hostile and evil authority. It also looks at how the Nazis looked at disability. Davies looks at opposites and contrasts and how ideas that are inhuman develop and gain traction in ordinary lives. Remembering Voltaire’s famous dictum: “Truly, those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities” This is an excellent historical novel which examines how women fare in war; how some resist evil and some accommodate it. The characterisation is good and the reader does become invested in the characters. There are plenty of parallels with what is happening today and yet again women and children are casualties. 10 out of 10 Starting Sea Change by Alix Nathan

Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites edited by Katy Soar “There was no sleep for him that night; he fancied he had seen the stone – which, as you know, was a couple of fields away – as large as life, as if it were on watch outside his window. “ “as new religion ousts the old it tenants the latter’s temples,” This particular incarnation of the Tales of the Weird series focuses on standing stones, stone circles, dolmens and burial sites. The editor, Katy Soar is an archaeologist (this does help I think) and her introduction is good. There are fifteen stories in all (ranging from 1893 to 2018). There are stories from Sarban, E F Benson, Jasper John, H R Wakefield, Algernon Blackwood, Stuart Strauss, Frederick Cowles, Arthur Machen, Mary Williams, J H Pearce, A L Rowse, Nigel Kneale (Of Quatermass fame), L T C Rolt, Lisa Tuttle and Elsa Wallace. These are generally good with assorted druids, ritual sacrifice, vengeful stones, some sentient rocks and plenty more. Stonehenge, although referenced in a few only stars in one of them. Blackwood’s contribution, The Tarn of Sacrifice, is pretty good: written in 1921 it concerns a survivor of The Somme, walking in The Lake District and reflects on the dead and disabled and the protagonist’s loss of faith and looking back on a much older faith. The more modern stories are also very good. One is even concerns motor racing. A circuit is extended and now goes through an ancient stone circle: this doesn’t go well. The power of the land and the past resonate throughout. 8 out of 10 Starting One thousand and one Ghosts by Alexandre Dumas

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky “Yes, the universe was built on a certain common logic that could be expressed by numbers, but those numbers themselves were an arbitrary construct that was culturally specific.” This is the second in the Final Architecture trilogy and is another slice of space opera, following many of the characters from the first novel, centred again on Idris Telemmier. Again the crew of the salvage ship The Vulture God are heavily involved. There are a mixture of species and the interactions and misunderstandings are well handled. The series revolves around the concept of unspace, which is how spaceships get around the universe. The primary threat to all species are the Architects who are moon sized and destroy planets (earth included). This instalment uncovers the reason why this is happening. It is definitely setting the scene for the final part, but Tchaikovsky adds detail and depth to the concepts he has introduced. There is thought behind this and one reviewer has compared the structure of the novel to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness because of the use of the concept of negation which is central to Tchaikovsky’s idea of unspace. I did find that interesting and can see the point of the comparison. Tchaikovsky plays with a lot of ideas. Central is an examination of diaspora. The earth has been destroyed and humans scatter all over the known universe taking wildly divergent intellectual directions as well. He also looks at cloning and disability over the series as well. The series is written from multiple points of view and it works pretty well. It’s entertaining without being empty and mindless. “The conspiracy theorist’s dream, the cabal of the mighty getting together to obliterate the bulk of humanity just so they could be kings of what remained” 8 out of 10 Starting The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh

Glencoe by John Prebble This is an account of the Glencoe massacre which took place on 13th February 1692. It describes the build up over several decades and looks at the main players. The backdrop is the replacement in 1688 of James II by William and Mary: replacing a Protestant with a Catholic. The massacre was carried out mainly by members of the Campbell clan. It was the Macdonald clan who were on the receiving end. The Campbells were soldiers in the Army and they came to Glencoe in peace. They stayed and received hospitality for several days until their orders were confirmed. Thirty-two people died. John Prebble was a journalist who also wrote some novels and for movies. He was passionately interested in Scottish history and this is part of a trilogy. The other parts being Culloden and The Highland Clearances. Prebble joined the Communist Party early on, although he left after the Second World War. He wrote a number of novels and factual books about Scottish history. Here Prebble looks at the way the clan system works and examines the complex interrelations between the clans and the history of raiding which went back centuries. He pays particular attention to the MacDonald clan of Glencoe and to the political backdrop to the massacre. The immediate trigger was a demand that all clans swear an oath of allegiance to William of Orange. The MacDonalds did swear the oath but were late in doing so. This is a good factual account of the massacre and the background to it. Prebble’s feelings about it are pretty clear, but he does a good job of telling the tale. 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

Ghostland by Edward Parnell This is an unusual mixture. It is part memoir, part travelogue around Britain, part birdwatcher’s diary, part review of 60s and 70s horror films, part review of ghost and spooky stories and part homage to 70s TV. It is a memoir of grief and loss as it charts the death of his parents (both quite young) and of his brother (also youngish). Parnell entwines all these themes together in chapters related to areas of the country and authors. The areas of the country include East Anglia and the fens, Dorset, Cornwall, Dungeness and Ayrshire amongst others. The authors include M R James, Arthur Machen, Blackwood, Alan Garner, William Hope Hodgson and Sebald. It all feels cathartic and linked Parnell seeking “reconciliation with the ghosts of the past”. Parnell also looks at films like The Wicker Man and The Child. ren of the Stones. He also considers some of the ghost stories the BBC produced in the 1970s: the stand out one being Jonathan Miller’s adaptation of M R James’s “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to you My Lad”. He also examines the British public information films of the 1970s. I remember them and frankly some of them were terrifying (they were meant to be). This is an interesting combination of themes. The individual parts work, but I am not entirely convinced they work as a whole. I did like the black and white photographs and it certainly brought back memories of some of the films and TV of my childhood. I also liked the way Parnell linked some of the works with place, but there was a bit too much plain reviewing and retelling of a story. To balance that the working out of the aspects of memoir and grief and the linking with literature was effective. 7 out of 10 Starting The Golden Road by William Dalrymple

Tales of the Tattooed edited by John Miller Another set of short stories in the British Library Tales of the Weird series, this one about tattoos. For once the introduction is worth reading. It raises some interesting issues, explains some history (for example the Victorian vogie for women to have tattoos) and points out some issues re colonialism: “Tattooing’s connection with Empire is complex, however. There is much more to the colonial history of tattooing than the demonisation of indigenous tattoo traditions. In contrast to Ballantyne’s blunt racism (in the novel Coral Island), the heavily tattooed Fijian harpooner Queequeg in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from 1851is a rich and sensitively drawn character. As much as concerns about the increasing popularity of tattooing in the period operate through ideas about racial difference (and especially through the ideas of the primitive or savage), they also show the instability of nationalist ideas about the body. The umarked “normal” and implicitly white Victorian (and later) body is not a “natural” entity, but rather is an idea that needs to be constantly reinforced and insisted upon by the exclusion of “other” bodies. This makes tattooing a significant topic for a postcolonial critique of the violent and broken logic of empire.” There are thirteen stories in all. The earliest story is 1882 and the last from the 1950s. There’s a story from a Japanese writer and several US authors. Some are well known, like Saki and Dahl. There are less supernatural stories in this, more are odd and several are crime and underworld related. Inevitably sailors and the sea also make an appearance. As always they are variable in quality but there are some that might leave an indelible impression (sorry, couldn’t resist that). There are some oddities, look out for the one where a leg is transplanted. The leg is tattooed and belonged to a sailor. The new owner found it trying to lead him into dodgy public houses and places of ill-repute! 7 out of 10 Starting Circles of Stone: Weird tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites edited by Katy Soar

The Orton Diaries by Joe Orton ”To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich and happy is surely going against nature.” I am not sure how well known Joe Orton is these days. He was a playwright who wrote some very good plays (Loot, What the Butler Saw, Entertaining Mr Sloane to name a few). His plays often had an element of farce, but they were disturbing and controversial. Orton died young at the age of 34 in 1967. He was gay and openly so. He was murdered by his partner Kenneth Halliwell, who committed suicide following the murder. Orton had been with Halliwell since he was eighteen and their relationship had been volatile. The diaries cover the last months of Orton’s life, from late 1966 until his death in August 1967, just after homosexuality was legalised. It is a day by day account of Orton’s life encapsulating the increasing success of his plays which was leading to a certain level of financial security after years of struggle. It also charts of Halliwell and Orton were growing apart. Halliwell was feeling overshadowed and left behind and was increasingly resentful as people wanted to know Orton and not him. Orton was not afraid to push boundaries and at that time the Lord Chamberlain was still responsible for maintaining morals at the theatre and could censor. But he pushed things as far as he was able: "Sex is the only way to infuriate the public. Much more f*****g and they'll be screaming hysterics.” Orton was living in a London flat and mixing in theatrical and showbusiness circles. The number of names he drops reaches epic proportions! Orton was on familiar terms with many of them. Then there is his sex life. Orton liked casual sex and describes in some detail those he picks up: mostly in public toilets. This is all very colourful and the diaries are interesting in themselves: Orton is witty and a good observer of human nature. There is a significant but. Orton and Halliwell tended to spend periods of time in North Africa. It was Tangier in May and June 1967. Here Orton (and Halliwell to a lesser degree) spent a good deal of time picking up young boys and having various types of sexual relations with them. The youngest he records was thirteen. Most were fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. It was all rather repulsive and very illegal, but there were also a good number of other men spending time there doing the same thing. It left a very unpleasant taste and for me puts Orton alongside a number of other infamous celebrities in the UK. 3 out of 10 Starting The Binding by Bridget Collins

The Italian Girl by Iris Murdoch “You know as well as I do that one can be imprisoned in one’s mind.” This is pretty much a novella at about 170 pages and was published in 1964. It seems to me quite typical Murdoch (having read a few). Creating a group of unlikeable characters and moving them around like pieces on a chessboard. Edmund Narraway is the narrator. His mother, Lydia, has just died and he has to return to the family home (quite a large one, with grounds, of course). Here resides his brother Otto and Isabel, Otto’s wife. Also present are Flora (Otto and Isabel’s daughter), Maria (basically a cook/housekeeper, the Italian Girl), David (Otto’s apprentice/help, Otto is a sculptor of sorts) and Elsa (David’s sister). Edmund has not been home for quite some time as he had fallen out with his mother: “I had no craving for luxuries and never had had, but I did not honour poverty for its own sake and disliked its indignities and inconveniences. I lived a solitary life.” Everybody appears to be having sex with everyone else (apart from Edmund and Maria) and as always with Murdoch (being a philosopher) agency is important and it all revolves around Maria, even though that does not become obvious until late in the novel. Murdoch also knows how to write an aphorism and as this is about a death, there are plenty of reflections about it: ‘It is not punishment, it’s acceptance of death that alters the soul, that is God’. There are plenty of thoughts on death, but another theme is hedonism as opposed to the ethical life (here neither are particularly appealing). It’s all a bit gothic and melodramatic and that makes this rather far-fetched. Not my favourite Murdoch, and the fairy tale element (enchanted woods and all that) didn’t work for me either. 6 out of 10 Starting Earthly Creatures by Stevie Davies

Yes, it was Corrag, a better title I think Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” “The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.” Orwell’s account of his own involvement in the Spanish Civil War. It covers the period between December 1936 and June 1937. Orwell was based in Barcelona and fought on the Aragon front. He experienced being in the trenches and the boredom and futility that go with it. Orwell also describes his experiences during the fighting in Barcelona in May 1937 when the PSUC (backed by Russia and identifying as Communist) fought with the Anarchists and the POUM (basically a Trotskyite group). He dissects the factional in-fighting as he goes along. He was shot in the neck, ending his front line involvement and goes on to describe the hospital system. The reportage is excellent throughout: Orwell was good at that. Orwell stated at the beginning that he was there to fight Fascism and he never lost that impetus. He describes his frustration with the infighting and tries to outline his own perceptions. Orwell had gone to Spain under the auspices of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and was therefore fighting with the POUM. There has been plenty of debate about whether the infighting enabled Franco’s eventual victory and there are arguments on both sides. Orwell was writing in 1938, before the end of the war and didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. The political reality was that the only major power supporting the Spanish government against Franco was the USSR which leant weight to the PSUC. Historically the left has always done this. It was brilliantly parodied by Python team in Life of Brian. It still happens. Orwell knew what he was fighting against and where his sympathies lay: “When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.” Homage to Catalonia has been debated a great deal over the years, going in and out of fashion and used by all sides of the political spectrum. There is no doubt this is a very good snapshot of a point in time, but as an overall analysis it is lacking and even Orwell, writing later, amended his analysis. This is well worth reading, as is the history of how it has been regarded. “It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.” 7 and a half out of 10 Starting Glencoe by John Prebble

Witch Light by Susan Fletcher Witch Light “The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people—in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that.” This is a fictionalised account of the massacre at Glencoe in 1692, one of those landmark moments in Scottish history. The Revolution of 1688 when James II was removed in favour of William of Orange led to a great deal of division, especially in Scotland. The politics are complex and speak to many divisions including Catholic/Protestant, nature of the monarchy, Parliament and the constitution, not to mention societal relations. The Macdonald clan who lived in Glencoe had been reluctant to swear allegiance to the new king and had done so late. A force led by a member of the Campbell clan went to Glencoe (most likely under orders) and killed about 38 men, women and children. That is a ridiculously brief account, but that’s the backdrop to this novel. There is another aspect to the novel. The main character Corrag is an outsider. At the beginning of the novel she is in a cell waiting to be burnt as a witch. She was in Glencoe at the time of the massacre. She is a healer using herbs as was her mother before her. Her mother was executed as well and she has fled from England to Scotland to escape and ends up in Glencoe. What Fletcher has done is humanise the whole situation. The novel is a double hander. Corrag is visited daily in her cell by a cleric transcribing her story. He starts off hostile and gradually changes his views. The characters are well drawn and appropriately contrasting. Fletcher has followed the historical facts pretty well (In the afterword she points out that there was an actual Corrag). The writing is lyrical and the descriptions of the natural world are excellent. The English don’t come out of it too well either! “The Highland way says it's who you say you love and who you serve, which is of worth. Not some title that is passed down upon you by tradition. That's the English way, and the Lowland way--but who can be born a nobleman? Nobility is earned... 'Tis our choices that make us.” 9 out of 10 Starting The Italian Girl by Iris Murdoch

Crawling Horrors edited by Daisy Butcher and Janette Leaf (Tales of the Weird) This particular Tales of the Weird collection covers the insect world and follows their usual formula. Edited by Daisy Butcher and Janette Leaf. The British Library has access to many thousands of magazines and periodicals where short stories were published: it must be quite a fun job trawling through them looking for stories on a particular topic. There are sixteen stories in this collection. In terms of time they range between 1846 band 1938. This being insects, it is spider free but there are plenty of ants (millions of them), moths, bees, caterpillars, hornets, beetles and a paying mantis. Egyptian mythology crops up a few times as well (there are a couple that are mummy and curse themed). They are mostly from Britain and the US but there is one from Japan and the settings are worldwide. The range is from Victorian Gothic to Science Fiction of the pulp variety. Not all the tales are negative or scary: weird covers a wide variety of topics. Warning Wings by Alton Eadie is one such tale. There are one or two well known authors. The first story is by Poe, is set in New York and alludes to a cholera epidemic. Algernon Blackwood contributes a story set in Egypt about a hornet and a vicar: “And he was thoroughly pleased with himself, for he was a sleek, vain, pompous, well-advertised personality, but mean as a rat.” H G Wells and E F Benso also Have stories in the collection. There is one anonymous and a couple where very little is known about the authors. The last story was written by an Austrian in 1938. It is set in the Amazon and concerns a plantation owner trying to hold back millions of well organised ants. Give the date it did seem to have links to the rise of fascism. It was also made into a film starring Charlton Heston (The Naked Jungle). Again some are better than others, but it is an interesting collection. 7 out of 10 Starting Tattooed Ink in the Tales of the Weird series.

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo “Yejide don't have the heart to tell him that is not only headstones that make a place a burial ground. Under the Green, under fancy restaurants that used to be plantation houses, under the government buildings, under the housing complexes, under the shopping malls, is layers and layers of dead — unknown, unnamed, unclaimed. It don't have a single place on this whole island that don't house the dead.” This is a debut novel and is set in Banwo’s native Trinidad. It is a sort of love story with the protagonists being Darwin and Yejide. There is a touch of magic realism about this and some Obeah. The dead are ever present and communicate with the living, certainly: “You were never the smartest child, but even you should know that when a dead woman offers you a cigarette, the polite thing to do would be to take it. Especially when that dead woman is your mother.” The writing is very poetic and is in Trinidadian English. Yejide has the gift of talking to the dead, inherited along the female line; her mother has just died and is awaiting burial. Darwin is a Rastafarian. He is unemployed and moves to the big city to get work. The only job he can get is at a cemetery, which is problematic for his religion. He is part of the gravedigging crew, who are a rather unsavoury bunch. Family and ancestry play a central role. It’s well written and creative with an element of thriller and romance. The setting and the magic realism add to the whole as does the myth and folklore used by the author. The alternating between the two main characters is a little clunky and the novel doesn’t really come together until the two main characters meet in the second half. However despite that the whole works and I enjoyed it. 7 out of 10 Starting Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton “She wanted, passionately and persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability.” This is one of Wharton’s better known works with a main character who has been compared to Becky Sharp and Scarlett O’Hara. Indeed Julian Fellowes has cited The Custom of the Country as being one of the inspirations for Downton Abbey (I can see some of you running for the hills straight away!). This novel is a reflection of Wharton’s feelings about the American upper classes in the early twentieth century (this was published in 1913). The main character is Undine Spragg, a beautiful young woman from middle class mid-west America who wants to all of the good things in life (including a well to do husband). “She wanted, passionately and persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability.” The reader gets a picture of society in New York, upper class society of course. The novels also moves to and from society in Paris and other parts of France. By the end of the book she is on her fourth husband (one of them twice). For Undine it is all about the pursuit of wealth and status. A small town makes big anti-parable. Wharton has turned a strong willed independent woman into the villain of this particular piece, although there are certain societal expectations which held her back too. It is a critique of upper class norms and customs: something Wharton knew a great deal about. There is also a good deal about class. This is undoubtedly a good novel, although I found Undine tiresome ( I am sure I was supposed to). However my tolerance for the foibles of the upper classes has certain boundaries. “Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could not help modelling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to choose between two courses.” 7 out of 10 Starting Among the Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson

Thanks France: I didn't know about that connection. Unruly by David Mitchell “I don't know where the idea of Vikings having horns on their helmets came from, but it's a brilliant one. In every possible way, other than the literal truth, they totally had horns on their helmets. Horned helmets was absolutely their vibe and I feel we all have a right to that deeper artistic truth. They had limited technology and manufacturing helmets was pretty tricky for them, I imagine, so putting horns on them wouldn't have been workable, and wouldn't have increased the functionality of the helmets, but I swear they'd have given it a go if they'd thought of it.” David Mitchell is a British comedian and raconteur, not to be confused with the author of the same name. This is a history of the English monarchy from earliest beginnings until the death od Elizabeth I in 1603. As you may guess it is not a conventional history, it’s more a combination of 1066 and all that, Monty Python and Horrible Histories. There’s lots of swearing, double entendres, sarcasm and wit. Taken as a whole it is clear that Mitchell is not a fan of monarchy. He provides a chapter on each monarch from Anglo Saxon times. There are introductory chapters on the times prior to this including Arthur: “Gandalf is fictional. King Arthur is a lie.” Mitchell also borrows an acerbic quote or two from the Pythons as well: “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.” Mitchell is funny and does make some pertinent points. He also strays into the juvenile, especially with the wordplay on the two Kings named Cnut in the early eleventh century, as you can imagine. Also because of the repetitive nature of the subject the whole can become a little tedious at times. Admittedly it is a funny book about a serious subject. It does what it says on the tin and there are lots of interesting facts and it is funny. “The defeat of the Armada in 1588 was Elizabeth's high point. Things went downhill after that. Militarily the triumph against Spain was rather undermined the following year when Elizabeth sent her own massive Armada, commanded by Sir Francis Drake, to Spain and Portugal. This was annihilated too. So maybe God was neutral. Or Muslim.” “People found it much easier to believe in a rose-tinted view of the past than a utopian future. They still do: hence ‘Take Back Control’ and ‘Make America Great Again’.” If you know little English history and want to learn a bit about the rich and shameless in a humourous manner you may enjoy this. 6 out of 10 Starting Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

The Bookseller of Inverness by S G Maclean “On his desk lay a dirk like the one he had once habitually carried, before the bearing of arms or the wearing of tartan had been forbidden to Highlanders. Tied to the hilt of his knife, though, was a white silk rosette. Iain’s heart began to quicken. It was the white cockade, as worn in his own blue bonnet and in that of practically every other soldier of the prince’s army in the ’45. The white cockade, the most recognisable of all the Jacobite symbols, on the hilt of the knife that had been used to cut the throat of the man sitting dead in his locked bookshop.” This is a historical novel which is something which Maclean specialises in, although this is a stand alone. It is set in 1752 and deals with the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and the Battle of Culloden. The protagonist is Iain MacGillivray who is now is his mid thirties and runs a bookshop in Inverness (hence the title). At one level this is an adventure story about the Jacobite rebellions and the struggle against the Crown and establishment. In this case there is plot, twists and action with a heavy dose of suspense. If you like that sort of thing it works. Books also play a part, which is always a plus. There is more though. It charts what happened to some of the rebels after Culloden. Many Jacobites who were captured were sent into indentured servitude in America or the Caribbean. Many died there and some returned. Another aspect of the glorious empire! There is also the aspect of occupation. In the novel, as at the time, there are occupying forces in Scotland, the redcoats of the army are obvious and on the streets. Maclean portrays a society still feeling the effects of the rebellion, the seizure of land, the executions, both sides still searching for those who had helped the other side. Maclean also depicts a traumatised community rather well. This works ok, Maclean tells a good story and it does work on two levels and is a bit of a narrative tutorial on Scotland in the early 1750s. 8 out of 10 Starting When we were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

Glimpses of the Unknown edited by Mike Ashley "...a ghost story can work on several levels ranging from the unnerving tingle of the unknown, to that hauntingly evocative atmosphere of something strange or uncertain." Part of the British Library Tales of the Weird series. This one is a collection is a collection of stories that have not been reprinted in any of the thousands of anthologies published over the years and some of the authors are completely unknown: there are a number of authors here who we know nothing about at all. There are some who were known in the time. The only one that is well known is E F Benson; the story published here is one not in any of his ghost story anthologies. We have the usual types of classic ghost stories here: a cursed tomb, a figure emerging from a picture, the dead seeking vengeance, a dying man heard on the airwaves trying to reveal his killer, haunted houses, a seat on a bench on the embankment that even the homeless won’t sit on, a cursed sword, a haunted violin, replaying of past events, a faithful servant (even after death) and much more; eighteen in all. The quality is variable and some of these should probably have stayed unknown, but there are some good ones: The House of Black Evil is quite original and taps into the Victorian obsession with spiritualism, One Strange Traveller with a mysterious hiker is also of interest as is the story set on the London Embankment. As with many in this series, you take the good with the bad. 6 out of 10 Starting Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson “In the wake of violence, acute or prolonged, we ask what we might need, how we might weather this time, how we might care for each other, how we might cultivate the space which encourages honesty, which encourages surrender. How we might build a small world, where we might feel beautiful, might feel free.” This follows a young Ghanian man in London (Stephen) over three summers: 2010, 2011,2012. He is eighteen in 2010 and just finishing school. We follow Stephen over the three summers and move between Ghana and London. The themes include family, music and dancing (especially music and dancing), food (you could learn how to make jollof from this), loss, love (particularly first love), racism, fathers and sons. Music is the thread running through it all from the intensity of Church worship to a different intensity of the nightclub mosh-pit (perhaps not so different. Jazz and playing music live; Stephen plays a trumpet, often with a group of friends: “I’ve only ever known myself in song, between notes, in that place where language won’t suffice but the drums might, might speak for us, might speak for what is on our hearts.” The whole is beautifully observed and the title relates to the spaces that Stephen occupies. These can be geographical, emotional, family spaces and so on. There are good descriptions of returns to Ghana and the growing distance between family in Ghana and family in London and how that distance grew between each return. Racism is in the background and the death of Mark Duggan at the hands of the police is referred to several times. Nelson shows how a life can contain both hardship and beauty. There is poetry in this, even in the description of the mundane. For me, it does manage to avoid becoming sentimental and isn’t prescriptive. The characters feel like people you might know. I liked the atmospheric nature of this and Nelson creates his Small Worlds rather well. “I want to build a place where there’s a sense of freedom which isn’t attached to anything else, that doesn’t come as part of a transaction. There would be no catch. Just a place for people to eat and drink, to plot and breathe. To be. A place we could call home.” 9 out of 10 Starting Witch Light by Susan Fletcher

The Politics of Paradise by Michael Foot The Politics of Paradise “The dead have been awakened – Shall I sleep?” The world’s at war with tyrants – shall I crouch? The harvest’s ripe – and shall I pause to reap? I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch; Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear It’s echo in my heart …” The first thing to say is that this is not a biography of Byron. It is an examination of his political and religious views and also his interactions with printers and critics. The author is Michael Foot, former leader of the Labour Party from 1979 to 1983: its most left wing leader until Jeremy Corbyn. Foot was clearly passionate about Byron and it comes through in this work. There is also a great deal about William Hazlitt, an essayist and critic who reviewed Byron’s work. Foot takes the reader through Byron’s politics and the relationship with his poetry. As an aside, there is a transcript of Byron’s maiden speech to the House of Lords. It is at the height of the Luddite disturbances and is a defence of the frame workers in Nottingham, close to where Byron lived. Foot tries to convince that Byron was a radical as Shelley. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the argument. Byron certainly became heavily involved in the independence movements in Italy and Greece, where he is remembered today. Foot avoids some of Byron’s complexities: his bisexuality and relationships with women amongst others. He does go through Byron’s primary poems Childe Harold, Cain Don Juan (or Donny Jonny as Byron referred to it). It is interesting, but is really for Byron fanatics (I am not one of them) because of the depth and complexity of the analysis. Foot did a great deal of research. If you want to know more about Byron’s views and get into some of the academic debates, this is for you. Not really for me. 7 out of 10 Starting Ghostland by Edward Parnell

The Green Man of Eshwood Hall by Jacob Kerr ‘Suddenly the Green Man was on the move, swaying and hurdling across the driveway, riding the great chariot of his own limbs, a rolling cascade of branches and flung bushes, thrashing his arms for balance as though he was crossing a tightrope, and finally toppling over at full stretch until just his fingertips touched the ivy that grew on the walls of the Hall.’ This is a fairly brief slice of folk horror. It is set in the early 1960s in Northumberland (here called North Albion). It is very much in two parts. The first half of the novel is about a family who are nomadic because of the father’s inability to hold down a job for any length of time. The focus is on Izzy, his 13 year old daughter. Ray’s wife Gerry has a heart condition, consequently she does little apart from care for her youngest child (known as the Bairn) and Izzy does all the cleaning and cooking. There is also 8 year old Annie. They move to Eshwood Hall where Ray is going to be Chauffer and handyman. All fairly straightforward. It is a routinely dysfunctional family. There is a touch of folklore running through it with May Queens and the like. Izzy spends a good deal of time in the local woods and suddenly the whole things changes direction as one reviewer says “M R James at his nastiest”. She finds a ruined chapel and meets the Green Man who consists of leaves, roots and tree: straight from the centuries old folklore. The Green Man seems to know what Izzy wants, but there’s always a price, a bargain to be made and a very nasty twist at the end. This is a sort of combination of coming of age, gothic horror and eco-horror. It is also a little insubstantial. Rather brief and doesn’t really know what it wants to be. “Branches twirled and unfurled on the edge of visibility, berries black as beetles clumped and clustered, knot holes in tree trunks widened and grew more important until they were revealed to be eye sockets, nostrils, a yawning mouth - and this was a man, this was the Green Man himself, and even as he drew himself together before her, stretching out and finding his length with a variety of creaks and crackles, Izzy knew that he had been here all along, in some form or other, watching.” 6 out of 10 Starting The Orton Diaries

Yes I did, it was pretty good. Erasure by Percival Everett “I was lonely, angrier than I had been in a long time, angrier than when I was an angry youth, but now I was rich and angry. I realized how much easier it was to be angry when one is rich. Of course, there was the accompanying guilt and the feeling stupid for feeling guilty, what I was told was one of two common intellectual’s diseases—the other being diarrhoea.” This is the first novel by Percival Everett I have read, published in 2001. It’s a good novel that works on a number of levels. It is a parody and a comedy, but there is also a poignant backdrop. The protagonist is Thelonius “Monk” Ellison. He is a Professor of English Literature and a writer of obscure “difficult” novels which virtually no one reads. He is single and his mother is developing Alzheimer’s disease. He has a brother who is gay and a sister who works at an abortion clinic and as a result gets death threats. Monk is struggling to get his books published and is annoyed by younger authors writing “black” novels which do well. So annoyed that he writes one himself (anonymously) which to his surprise is snapped up by a publisher with a large advance, sells lots of copies and wins prizes. The comedy and parody parts are effective: “I wouldn’t use the cliché that I was the captain of a sinking ship, that implying some kind of authority, but rather I was a diesel mechanic on a steamship, an obstetrician in a monastery.” but the storyline concerning Alzheimer's is actually very good (for once). It’s also a great send up of the publishing industry. The whole thing does jump around a little but the novel works on several levels. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson

I have read two by her now and loved both. Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers Rare Singles The is the latest offering from Ben Meyers and it is just wonderful, completely different from Cuddy. It is set in the north of England: Scarborough (known to some as Scarbados with a certain level of irony!) to be precise. The novel has a certain level of nostalgia for me as well. The centre of the novel is a Northern Soul weekender. This might take some explanation. Northern Soul is a movement from the late 1960s and 1970s onwards focussed on the North and Midlands of England. It is all about following soul music, a certain type anyway. Not the Motown type, but with a heavier beat and faster tempo. I won’t bore you with a list of songs and artists (although I could). There were certain nightclubs where Northern Soul devotees met: in Manchester, Blackpool, Stoke, Wigan Casino (in Wigan). Wigan Casino was mine when I could escape the clutches of my parents. There are a couple of films about Northern Soul: Soulboy and the imaginatively titled Northern Soul. Northern Soul devotees still meet for weekends of music and nostalgia, usually in seaside towns around the country. Scarborough is one of those. It has a sort of fading grandeur about it, which Myers captures well. Rare Singles has two main characters. Earlon “Bucky” Bronco made a few singles in 1967/8 which went nowhere. He is now over 70, recently widowed with plenty of health issues. These days the singles he cut are collectors items and his name is well-known on the Northern Soul scene, something he is entirely unaware of. Dinah is part of the group organising the weekend and she is looking after Bucky for the weekend. This is the story of the weekend. I haven’t mentioned the seagulls, I probably should, they are ever present. Myers seems to be good at offbeat friendships and this is another example. This is just a joy from start to finish and it’s not often I say that. 9 and a half out of 10 starting The Green Man of Eshwood Hall by Jacob Kerr

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym “Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, 'Do we need tea? she echoed. 'But Miss Lathbury...' She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind. I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.” This is Pym’s second novel, published in 1952 and set in post-war London in the suburbs. It is a first person narrative and the story is told by Mildred Lathbury, who is single and just thirty years old. There is a good deal of humour which is dry and self-deprecating. Mildred is the daughter of a clergyman and moves in Church circles, the local church is Anglican, Anglo_Catholic in fact and much of Mildred’s life revolves around it. She works part time for the Society for Aged Gentlewomen (I kid you not). It is a world of shortages and a rather genteel drabness: not to mention genteel poverty (not real poverty). There is a good deal of exploring human foibles within a limited setting. Comparisons have been made with Austen (nope, definitely not) and E F Benson (more like it). Mildred lives in a flat with a shared bathroom. At the start of the novel a slightly racy couple move in and provide entertainment throughout. The local vicar and his sister also feature along with a number of other women who populate the Church and its bazaars and jumble sales. Pym does focus on the relationships between men and women as well and on Mildred’s single state, which bothers others more than it bothers her. “Surely many a romance must have been nipped in the bud by sitting opposite somebody eating spaghetti?” Today it is certainly a period piece, a portrait of a certain way of life, now long gone. Pym does scatter some humour and some of it does work: “My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the 'stream of consciousness' type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.” 7 and a half out of 10 Starting The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill “There had been moments when it seemed as though from the ferment of radical ideas a culture might emerge which might be different both from the traditional aristocratic culture and from the bourgeois culture of the protestant ethic which replaced it. We can discern shadows of what this counter culture might have been like. rejecting private property for communism, religion for rationalistic and materialistic pantheism, the mechanical philosophy for dialectical science, asceticism for unashamed enjoyment of the good things of the flesh, it might have achieved unity through a federation of communities, each based on the fullest respect for the individual. Its ideal would have been economic self-sufficiency, not world trade or world domination. The economic significant consequence of the Puritan emphasis on sin was the compulsion on labour, to save, to accumulate, which contributed so much to making the Industrial Revolution possible in England. Ranters simply rejected this; Quakers ultimately came to accept it. Only Winstanley put forward an alternative....... ...It came nearest to realisation in the Digger communities, which might have given the counter-culture some economic base.” Christopher Hill was one of the doyens of Marxist historiography in the twentieth century. His specialism was the English Civil War. I have been reading a fair amount of historical novels set in the seventeenth century and so this complements them well. This is a remarkable piece of historical writing, not without its flaws, but opening a window into the many and diverse groups that were given the opportunity to develop and grow in the vacuum that the Civil War created. Hill does speculate where all these ideas came from, and there were many of them. He makes the case they were always there, underground and unrecorded. The sudden removal of authority (ecclesiastical and royal) and the availability of the means to print pamphlets and tracts provided the impetus for these ideas to surface. The list of groups is impressive: Levellers, Familists, Ranters, Gridletonians, Diggers, Quakers, Muggletonians, Seekers, Fifth Monarchists, Anabaptists and many more. For a brief time these ideas were freely expressed until the ruling classes got themselves organised and the new elite was in place. What about these ideas. Free healthcare for all was one as was education for all up to the age of eighteen. Divorce on an equal basis for all. Free love was also part of equation, although as Hill points out, as there was no effective birth control it tended to be freedom for men only. There was also a questioning of marriage. Religious views were also challenged, particularly the Divinity of Christ and the resurrection. If you think Nietzsche was the first to talk about the Death of God, think again. Joseph Salmon and Richard Coppin both wrote about the Death of God. There were lots of political ideas relating to democracy and equality as well. There was even criticism of the trade with India because of its effects on those in India. There was a common call “All lanlords are thieves”. For me the most impressive group were the Diggers and Gerrard Winstanley. They reoccupied land that had been enclosed and turning it common land again. They planted crops on it, hence the name Diggers. Inevitably it didn’t last, but the ideas remained. Historical thinking has moved on and the work has been much criticized and debated, but it is an excellent introduction to the ideas that were thrown up by the Civil War and is well worth reading. 9 out of 10 Starting Rare Singles by Ben Myers

Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance Hillbilly Elegy “People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than twenty hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.” Entering the world of MAGA and right-wing US politics is not something I usually do. We have enough problems with the far right and the rise of fascism in the UK. On the face of it, this is a fairly straightforward memoir of a childhood and upbringing of someone with Hillbilly roots. Vance had roots in Jackson Kentucky and born and raised in Middletown Ohio. Vance joined the Marines and eventually went to Yale Law School. There are plenty of slips and trips on the way. The main focus though is Vance’s family and its dysfunctional nature, particularly his mother. He was mainly brought up by his grandmother and grandfather (mamaw and papaw). Vance attempts to delineate what he sees as Hillbilly culture; there’s a lot about family and a good deal about revenge and sticking up for family. When it came out it was seen by many as a clue to why the white working classes were voting in numbers for Trump. Vance was initially hostile to Trump, obviously that has changed. Vance identifies the issues that poor rural and rustbelt communities have with addiction, unemployment, crime and abuse. He also has the occasional rant about those on welfare playing the system to get booze, drugs and mobile phones: “This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy.” What could have been a simple memoir that doesn’t stand out of a young man overcoming difficult circumstances becomes a rant against the idle and feckless poor. It’s not the memoir it’s the conclusions drawn. “I have known many welfare queens; some were neighbors, and all were white.” 3 out of 10 Starting Unruly by David Mitchell

The Overstory by Richard Powers “The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” This is certainly a good story: it is also a long and complex one with a significant character list (Nine main ones). The story moves between each character over many years. It is a book about the environment and the way humanity is destroying it. More specifically it is about trees. “This is not our world with trees in it. It's a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.” The novel is split into four sections: Roots, Trunk, Crown, Seeds. The first part links some of the main characters to significant trees. We follow the characters over a long period, especially as they all move towards environmental activism, sometimes very direct. There is certainly an air of melodrama about it and a number of critics were unhappy about the novel’s pessimism. The pessimism is about the human race rather than trees. The trees in the novel are as much characters as the humans. The title itself is even a botanical term for the higher level of vegetation in a forest, the canopy. Powers has a fascination with trees and he is aware of the latest scientific research: “We found that trees could communicate, over the air and through their roots. Common sense hooted us down. We found that trees take care of each other. Collective science dismissed the idea. Outsiders discovered how seeds remember the seasons of their childhood and set buds accordingly. Outsiders discovered that trees sense the presence of other nearby life. That a tree learns to save water. That trees feed their young and synchronize their masts and bank resources and warn kin and send out signals to wasps to come and save them from attacks. “Here’s a little outsider information, and you can wait for it to be confirmed. A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.” This is all well woven together and the narrative illustrates how destructive as a species we are. On the whole it is impressive and Powers writes with passion. The start is captivating, but it does tend to wander towards the end. However the story does illustrate well the issues around deforestation, and, of course, I’m on the side of the trees. 8 and a half out of 10 Starting The Bookseller of Inverness by S G Maclean